A legitimate artistic movement known as Open Source Embroidery has sprung up to explore the relationship between, no joke, software engineering and needlework. It's pretty awesome.

The crux of the largely British movement is that both needlework and software creation are an amalgamation of tons of tiny little pieces of work that all come together to create something much larger than the sum of its parts. They also see that both are gender-specific—needlework is traditionally female, while software engineering is traditionally male. Some of the knitters were actually involved in the computer industry at some point in their lives, so their needlework is informed by their interest in technology. It's pretty cool stuff, check out the mini-gallery below. [Wired, images also courtesy Wired]